Bloggers need their news, and they need it now. Timeliness is essential. An aggregator for multiple newsfeeds is what an RSS Feed Reader can provide. Pulling in the most recent articles from your favorite news sources and putting them all in one place, organized and easy to locate.

Most Feed readers are free. A few charge a fee, some have a one time cost, while others are available through subscription. The paid apps typically include some degree of tech support, email and blogging tools. Fortunately, for students, there are Feed Reader apps that provide basic services free of charge.

While it isn’t the purpose of this site to publish political news or commentary on current events, this particular issue touched the students of the WordPress class at Clark College and they’ve asked the instructor to expand upon the discussion held in class on this topic.

The lives and welfare of bloggers and social media publishers are often restricted by local and national freedom of speech and censorship laws, labeled insurgents, protestors, and activists violating laws with the “goal of inciting riots or government overthrow.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Reporters Without Borders report frequently on the persecution, imprisonment, and attacks on bloggers and web publishers around the world, citing 27 journalists and “netizens and citizen journalists” killed and 174 journalists and 166 netizens imprisoned since the beginning of 2014 on their Press Freedom Barometer.

This past week, Russia has imposed the Internet Law, commonly known as the “blogger’s law,” imposing registration, site blocking, and harsher penalties against websites found to be inciting dissension in Russia.

Russian President Putin Puts Down Internet Freedoms

“The goal is to kill off the political blogosphere by the fall.” – blogger Andrei Malgin

A report called “World Press Freedom Index 2014 states that Russia is 148th out of 179 countries on their list rating government’s media freedom and rights, and anticipating an even lower score next year due to Putin’s “draconian legislation” and efforts to restrict freedom of speech and transparency within its borders.

Blogging is a dynamic and rapid way to share your opinion or expertise on a subject, as well as a powerful way to build your business. According to The West Program, “Blogging Statistics,” 77% of internet users read blogs and, according to BlogHer:

81% of U.S. online consumers trust information and advice from blogs.

In the article Top Blogging Statistics: 45 Reasons to Blog, they clarify the value and impressive statistics about the true power of blogging and the potential it holds for building lasting positive relationships with visitors.

The article explains that visitors may be reading the information presented in blogs, but whether an ongoing positive relationship is created with that visitor is another matter. Because people are often manipulated and led astray by information, they have become increasingly skeptical about information presented in all forms of media.

Riddle o’ the day… What do tea parties, a former humanitarian worker to Africa, custom greeting cards, and craft retreats all have in common? Why, you can find them all on WordPress, of course!

With over 76 million WordPress sites in the world, the variety of subject matter to be found among them is as diverse as the people who use WordPress. As a new user, myself, I thought it would be interesting to talk to some of those users to learn more about their experience with WordPress and why they count themselves among those millions of users. Continue reading Interview: Who Are the WordPress Users in Your Neighborhood?→

Despite the many different roles involved in creating and maintaining content on the web, there are only a handful of holidays that actually celebrate them.

Have you ever heard of Programmers Day? Programmers Day is celebrated the 256th day of each year, or September 13th and September 12th on leap years. There is also System Administrator Appreciation Day, which, for 2014, will be celebrated on July 25th and is a celebration of not only system admins but all IT workers as well.

Are there any holidays to specifically celebrate bloggers or blogging in general? A few in fact. The major one you may have heard of before is World Bloggers Day which is celebrated on the second of May and is simply a day to recognize all bloggers worldwide who tirelessly spread relevant information online.

A day you may have not heard of but probably should have is Blog Action Day which is celebrated on October 15th or 16th every year. Blog Action Day is when all participating bloggers write about a particular subject to gain social awareness on the topic. This is a great example of how blogging can bring about social change.

Due to the overwhelming variety of subjects covered by the millions of blogs out there, this isn’t a bit surprising. With this massive well of content and all the changes and inspiration that have sprung from the myriad of blogs, one would think people would recognize blogging, as a platform for social change and enrichment, with at least a few holidays.

The closest thing to a holiday celebrating blogging in such a way is the celebration of internet freedoms. There is an unofficial celebration of the defeat of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) on January 18th organized by Internet Freedom Day. The Internet Freedom Day website is a great way to see how people are embracing this idea. Also, the #InternetFreedomDay posts on Twitter are a great example of people excited about this holiday.

Although they are not recognized officially, there are a few holidays celebrating IT workers. There are none celebrating bloggers or even the blog itself, though, which I think is a shame. If we were to have a day for celebrating the blog, I would suggest December 17th as this was the day in 1997 that the term “weblog” was coined. Or, perhaps late April or early May as this was the time of year when the term “blog” was created by breaking the word “weblog” into two words “we blog” by Peter Merholz in 1999.

It would be nice for the whole blogging community to have a day to think and write about the blogging experience itself since it has been such a cultural milestone.

Defining a Blog

If you were setting out to write an article titled “What is Blogging, Anyway?”, you would probably start out by looking into the topic the way any true internet researcher would: by typing “Blog” into Wikipedia and seeing what results came up. The definition of what constitutes a blog is fairly inline with what you might expect:

A blog (a truncation of the expression web log) is a discussion or informational site published on the World Wide Web and consisting of discrete entries (“posts”) typically displayed in reverse chronological order (the most recent post appears first). Continue reading What is Blogging, Anyway?→

Welcome to the class site for the WordPress classes at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington. All content is created by the students and instructors writing about WordPress, offering WordPress tips, techniques, and helpful information as part of their class assignments. Student discussions are held on ClarkWP Talk. Please see our About, Contributors, and Policies for more information.

Students Serving Up WordPress Tips and Techniques for Clark College Students and the World

Welcome to ClarkWP Student Site

Welcome to the class site for the WordPress classes at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington. All content is created by the students and instructors writing about WordPress, offering WordPress tips, techniques, and helpful information as part of their class assignments. Student discussions are held on ClarkWP Talk. Please see our About, Contributors, and Policies for more information.

Welcome to the Clark College student-run WordPress site. This is a class project for the WordPress and related courses offering articles by the students on WordPress and web publishing news, tips, techniques, and commentary.

Many of the articles are graded class assignments, but many are self-assignments by the students.